JOHN LOCKE and SUSTAINABLE GOOD

If John Locke's idea is accepted that government is a social contract guiding individuals to a common good, then public officials should be thinking of ways for us the people to live and move in harmony and promote a sustainable general welfare. Many of them are already doing that, some quite eloquently so. We need government to satisfy needs (such as rubbish removal) and to create opportunities (e.g. education, public works). 

Would John Locke smile on this scene in China?

Our transportation infrastructure, so heavily weighted to auto addiction, is sadly unsustainable. Many civic leaders wonder how much of the seemingly unending stream of new road vehicles are really needed. Whether gas or propane, vehicles USA generate millions of tons of carbon dioxide every day. Road costs keep getting higher, and we hardly have funds to maintain existing highways and bridges  --in the USA about 50,000 miles of Interstates, dwarfed by 2.6 million miles of paved roads with a total of 8.6 million lane-miles, dotted by thousands of acres of parking lots and garages.

What a climate-challenged mess! What would Locke, whose writings influenced Voltaire, Rousseau and the writers of the U.S. Constitution, say about it?

A Pod-Way Out of Our Dilemma

Few doubt that car costs will continue to rise. We, the People, whether under the sway of John Locke, Rand Paul, or Elizabeth Warren, need preemptive policy shifts to get us out of our auto addiction. There are very strong arguments that investing in pedestrian and bikeway networks provides more benefits per dollar than highway improvements.  Wisely planned, new ped-bike infrastructure will make mass transit more viable. ATN has emerged as an option for community-scaled mobility services. They can feed existing transit stations. Much can be done without costly guideways.  

Sadly, ATN is not being designed into huge road projects. Witness New York’s $4-billion replacement of the cross-Hudson Tappan Zee Bridge north of NYC. ATN is light and would not impact structural requirements. Rail was dropped for these very reasons.

Things do change and here is a striking but little-known example. According to Harvard’s Professor Emeritus Charles Harris, in 1850 eighty percent of the land in southern New England was directly used by humans: only 20% was forest.  With no government master plan, radical change came as the USA expanded westward. By 1950, agriculture and industry had dwindled in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island so that 80% of the land was again in forest!

Today over 90 percent of urban travel is by motorized vehicles. Transit’s share is generally given as 2-3 percent in the USA. Walking and biking are harder to measure, and it seems like they are growing. Let’s say that 10% is green.  Can we push that to 25% and then to 50%? What might the Sierra Club, the National Institute of Health and the League of Women’s Voters have to say such matters? 

Podcar City 8 in Stockholm

The auto industry is fast becoming a quaint leftover from the twentieth century. Who cares what Detroit thinks? More is happening in California’s hot Silicon Valley - hotbed of Google, Uber, and ATN. California is collaborating with Swedish officials, and the 8^th annual Podcar City conference will take place September 3-5 on Stockholm’s airfront. Come up to speed there with those who under the influence of John Locke's 17th century thinking, believe that government is part of the solution in the 21st.